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pression. But Schlegel seems to have a very slight acquaintance with Marlow's writings, and is not aware of that energy and depth of passion to be found in his Dramas. Mr Gifford, in his admirable edition of Ben Jonson, alluding to this expression, says,—"Marlow has many lines which have not hitherto been surpassed. His two parts of Tamburlaine, though simple in plot, and naked in artifice, have yet some rude attempts at consistency of character, and many passages of masculine vigour and lofty poetry. Even the bombastic lines which Shakespeare puts into the mouth of Pistol are followed by others in the same scene, and even in the same speech, which the great Poet himself might have fathered without disgrace to his superior powers."—Heywood calls him "the best of Poets;" and Meres, in his second part of "Wits' Commonwealth," names him with Sidney, Spenser, Shakespeare, Daniel, and others, "for haveing mightily enriched, and gorgeously invested, in rare ornaments and resplendent habiliments, the English tongue." Carew, the Cornish antiquary, in his "Excellencies of the English Tongue," also places him along with Shakespeare:—"Would you read Catullus? take Shakespeare's and Marlow's fragments." Here he probably alludes to Marlow's translations of Ovid's Epistles, and to that most beautiful and romantic pastoral ballad, "The passionate Shepherd to his Love," which, with Sir Walter Raleigh's admirable reply, may be seen in "Walton's Complete Angler. It is stated by Steevens, in the first volume of his Shakespeare, (p. 94) that Marlow's translations from Ovid were commanded, by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, to be burned at Stationers' Hall. This fact is also stated in the Censura Literaria of Sir Egerton Brydges, who says, that the translations were strongly tainted with the licentious obscenity of the original; but he quotes a passage almost free from that charge. Indeed it may here be remarked, that Marlow's plays give less offence on that score than the works of any of his contemporaries, or even of his great successors. H e seems at all times to have been hated by the Clergy. Bishop Tanner, in his "Bibliotheca Britannico-Hibernica," acknowledges his great poetical genius, calling him "Poeta paucis inferior," but he adds, "Atheista et Blasphemus horrendus. Tanner, however, borrows every thing from Wood, and Wood seems not only to have disliked Marlow, but is a most prejudiced person against all the poetical tribe, and is fond of repeating a favourite opinion, that all poets are men of licentious lives, and dangerous heresies. In his "Censure of Poets," Drayton pays Marlow this fine compliment:—

George Peele, in "The Honour of the Garter," says, that he was

Nash, speaking of Hero and Leander, says, "Of whom divine Musæus sung, and a diviner muse than he, Kit Marlow." In this he alludes to Marlow's translation of Hero and Leander, which, with a translation of the first book of Lucan, was published in quarto in 1600, though it must also have been published before that year. For of all the Panegyrists of Marlow, the most extravagant and hyperbolical is Henry Petowe, who, in 1598, published the second part of Hero and Leander. He says

Poor Marlow's death was most unfortunate, and such as gave his enemies an opportunity of abusing, and most probably of calumniating, his memory. The following is Anthony Wood's curious account of the dramatist's wretched end. "This Marloe giving too large a swing to his own wit, and suffering his lust to have the full reins, fell to that outrage and extremity (as Jodelle, a French tragic poet did), being an Epicure and an Atheist, that he denied God and his Son Christ; and not only in word blasphemed the Trinity, but also, as it was credibly reported, wrote diverse discourses against it, affirming our Saviour to be a Deceiver, and Moses to be a Conjuror,—(honest Anthony himself was no conjuror, as Dr Berkenhout well remarks in his Historia Literaria)—the Holy Bible also to contain only vain and idle stories, and all religion but a device of policy. But see the end of this person, which was noted by all, especially the Precisians. For, so it fell out, that he being deeply in love with a